1. Technical Field
This invention relates generally to protective textile sleeves for protecting elongate members, and more particularly, to open wrappable woven protective sleeves.
2. Related Art
It is known to utilize textile sleeves to protect elongate members from a variety of external environmental conditions. Woven sleeves can either be formed having a seamless, tubular wall, or an open, wrappable wall having opposite lengthwise extending edges configured to overlap one another. Wrappable woven sleeves are typically constructed with relatively stiff weft monofilament yarns (also referred to as fill yarns) that extend widthwise and circumferentially about the wall to provide the sleeve with high hoop strength, thereby inhibiting the sleeve from being crushed or flattened. Unfortunately, although woven sleeves having stiff weft yarns attain high hoop strength, they have limited flexibility along their length, thereby reducing their ability to be routed about circuitous, meandering paths, and if bent too much, cause the sleeve wall to kink and form openings along a seam between the overlapping edges, wherein the openings formed provide a source for ingress of contamination, whether fluid or solid in form. In some cases, in order to provide a more flexible sleeve when increased flexibility is necessary, woven wrappable sleeves are fabricated in their entirety from more flexible multifilament weft yarns or from very fine, small diameter weft monofilaments; however, these sleeves, although having an increased flexibility, suffer from a greatly reduced hoop strength, and thus, are prone to being crushed or flattened in use, thereby subjecting the elongate members being protected therein to damage.
Accordingly, what is needed is a woven textile sleeve that combines the benefits of a woven sleeve having both a high hoop strength and a woven sleeve that is flexible, thereby providing protection against being crushed, while at the same time, being flexible, non-kinking, and resisting the formation of opening between overlapping edges when routed over circuitous, meandering paths and when bent around corners of 90 degrees or more.